I'm just finishing up my breakfast when I hear a car pull up outside my cabin. It's not surprising, while I don't have visitors often I do allow people into my house, and this one's expected. I stand up, dusting the last of the toast off my fingers as I open my front door. “Gerald.”

“Dan, it's good to see you,” Gerald says, setting down the box in his arms to clap me on the back. “It's been too long.”

“Hey, you're the one who comes up here on your days off,” I remind him. “It's not like I'm going anywhere.”

Gerald looks like he’s about to say something, but it’s an argument we’ve had too many times over the years, and he knows he’s not going to be the one to change my point of view. Instead he looks around, then points toward the O’Hara cabin. “Looks like you've got a new neighbor, that little scooter's new. You met them yet?”

“Not yet,” I admit, and Gerald's mood darkens a little. “What? Just haven't gone over to say hi, that's all.”

“Yeah well, here's your stuff from the city,” Gerald says, lifting my bag. “One bag of Himalayan pink salt, one package of the beef Portillo's uses for their sandwiches, three rolls for said beef, and one jibarito, courtesy of Lieutenant Guerrero.”

“She made Lieutenant?” I ask, smiling a little sadly. After the fire, she'd been one of the members of the company to visit me most often in the hospital, besides Gerald. She tried her best, bless the woman, but I could see it in her eyes, and I was in a bad place. It was right about that time the bullshit in the papers was at its worst. Still, she hasn’t given up on trying to be nice to me, and will drop a little something in Gerald’s care packages from time to time. “Good for her.”

“Bad for the company though, she's had to transfer over near Soldier Field. Great for her career, and they get swag from the Bears. Still, she asks how you're doing.”

“Tell her I'm still here,” I reply, unwrapping the now cold sandwich. “I still don't understand how a Mexicana like her learned Boriqua food.”

“Well, don't complain, I have to beg to get one of those things,” Gerald says with a bit of a smile, but his voice sounds tight, like he's got something on his mind.

I'm not one to let things lie around, so I just jump in with both feet. “Spill it Gerald. You’ve got something eating at you, and you’re not the kind to deal with it well. So what’s the deal?”

Gerald laughs ruefully. “We must have spent too much time together, you're still able to read my mind.”

“Not quite, you're just terrible at hiding when you've got shit on your mind,” I reply, pointing towards my back door. “Come on man, the sun's nice on the back side of the house in the morning.”

Gerald nods, following me out to the two chairs I've got sitting in the cleared dirt. “These are new.”

“I've been working on them most of the winter,” I admit. “Had to do something with all those split logs, and it gave me something to do when I was stuck inside because of the fucking weather.”

Gerald settles into one of the adjustable Adirondack chairs, nodding after a moment. “Nice angle, relaxing without being too nuts. You hand shaped all of this?”

“The dowel that sets the recline I got in town, I don't have a lathe, but the rest… yeah,” I admit. “So what's on your mind? You didn't come to admire my woodworking skills.”

Gerald nods, leaning forward. “I got offered a promotion, man. Guerrero wants me as an Engineer in her company. I pin next month.”

“Congrats,” I reply, standing up. “Want a coffee?”

“Yeah,” Gerald says before shaking his head. “Dan, it just hit me because… well, you know. Until now, we've both been the same rank.”

“No, I was the same rank as you,” I call from the kitchen as I pour two cups, bringing one out to him. “I'm not a firefighter any more, Gerald. You know that.”

“Bullshit, man!” Gerald growls, still taking his cup. “For fuck's sake, you might be medically retired but you're still a firefighter at heart. It’s in your blood, it’s in our bones, you know that. Hell, I bet you've still got your badge.”

“Threw it in the lake the day after I arrived,” I lie, sitting down. It’s in my dresser, tucked under my underpants. “Gerald, what did being a firefighter get me? A half burned body, scars that make me look like a freak... hell, you can barely look at me and you're my best friend!”

“I'm about the only person you let into your life,” Gerald shoots back. “So I'd say I might be your only friend. Who else do you even let in your house, the UPS guy?”

“No, he drops his packages by the door,” I return, sipping my coffee. “Gerald, I'm not angry that you're going up the ladder. Hell, I'm glad for you. But I'm not a member of the Chicago Fire Department any longer. Like you said, I'm medically retired.”

“Who turned his disability check and lump sum from the newspaper assholes into a run down cabin and has spent nearly every day since you got out of the rehab hospital renovating it. You took what was a summer only fishing cabin and made it into a full time house.”

“It's all I need,” I reply, shrugging. “What's your point, Gerald?”

“What happens next?” Gerald asks, sighing. “You've renovated this place, but you almost never leave. It's as much a prison as it is a home.”

“I do leave though,” I reply. “No point in having that truck I've got out front unless I go somewhere in it.”

Gerald snorts. “You put fewer miles on your truck in a year than I do in a week. But that's not the point.”

“What is your point, Gerald?” I ask, starting to lose my patience. “You know I enjoy when you come out to visit, but if you're just going to dance around the point I've got work to do.”

“Work… what, another couple dozen logs split into kindling? A tree that you want to chop down? Maybe turn a little more of that dirt patch I see over there beside the cabin?” Gerald growls. “What's that for, Dan? So you can start growing some fucking beans and corn out here and never have to go into town again?”

“Actually, it's for sweet potatoes, the local market's selection is shit,” I reply. “Soil’s shit for corn. Gerald, you're still not getting to the point, and I'm really not in the mood to play twenty fucking questions.”

“What comes after that?” Gerald asks. “Dammit Dan, for four years now I've waited for you to fully pull out of the world, because I know what the next step is after you do. Dan... Dan, I talked with the Department shrink, and they said I shouldn't say it, but I don't know another way to go about it. Am I gonna come out here some day and find you blew your fucking head off?”

“Nope... I don't have a gun,” I point out. “Gerald, do you really think I'm gonna suicide one day?”

“I don't know!” Gerald yells, slamming his coffee cup down. “Goddammit Dan, every time I come out here I'm scared shitless that it's gonna be for the last time! You're pulling back more and more it seems, you just exercise your ass off, add little upgrades to this cabin, and run through the woods like you're preparing for the goddamn Navy SEALS or the zombie apocalypse. You get nearly everything you use off of Amazon. For fuck's sake, I bet you order your toilet paper off the Net. You only go into town because you actually eat fresh vegetables.”

“And shoes,” I add, knowing I eat so many vegetables because of all the canned, processed shit I ate in the hospital during my recovery. After that, fresh spinach makes me feel like I’m free again. Gerald wouldn’t understand. “I hate buying shoes without trying them on.”

Gerald isn't amused. “You see my point. Dan… you're my brother, but I hate seeing you retreating more and more from-”

“From the world?!?!” I explode, slamming my own cup down. “What is there in the world for me, Gerald? I go into town, and you know what I hear? I've got half the goddamn town thinking I'm a coward!”

“Which is total bullshit,” Gerald shoots back. “The newspaper settled, they printed the retraction, remember? So who would be so fucking stupid to say that, anyway?”

I don't answer, I'm too pissed off. I know who started the rumor, it was Bobbi Valentine. If she can't spread a rumor, she'll start one, and with me she found a doozy that's stuck. Half Fried, she called me, spreading the lie that the reason only half my body is burned is because I used the boy as a shield when the burning house collapsed on me. “Doesn't matter.”

“Let me guess… the same bitch you told me about before,” Gerald says, his voice softening. “Dammit Dan, when are you going to forgive yourself? You did everything you could, you broke every goddamn rule in the book including opening you own coat, and still the boy died. You're not burned on that side, you're burned on the other side because of that, we both know it. So who gives a fuck what some local yokel who read maybe one story about it thinks? You know what his sister thinks, she wants to-”

“No,” I declare for what has to be the hundredth time. “I won't let her see me. Not after… not after what I did to her brother.”

“Yeah well… Dan, you gotta find some light, man,” Gerald says softly. “You gotta. Or else you are going to end up in trouble, and I'm going to come out here to find it someday.”

“Don't worry, Gerald. I won't trouble you that much.”

It's not how I meant to say it, but Gerald's face goes pale. “Yeah well… listen, I need to get going, I can see I'm just riling you up. Give me a call later?”

I nod, getting to my feet. I walk Gerald to the door, watching as he goes over to his car and opens the door. Just as he starts to get in, I call out. “Gerald!”

“What?”

“Next time… think you can bring a pizza from Pequod's?” I ask. “I'll Paypal you the money.”

Gerald looks down, and when he looks up again he's both irritated and smiling a little. “You're a pain in the ass, Benson! You know that?”

“Which is probably why you're going to put the banana peppers on it,” I retort. “I could use them!”

“I just bet you could. Okay, I'll check my schedule and e-mail you when I'll be out,” Gerald says, sliding behind the wheel. He pulls away and I watch him go. He's a good friend, spending nearly an entire day driving just to deliver thirty bucks of Chicago comfort and maybe a half hour of conversation.

But I do wonder… does he really think that I'm going to suicide?

No, never. Not that I didn't think about it at first, those first few months when I was in the hospital covered in bandages and waiting for the nerve endings to finally stop screaming at me night and day, when the docs said they couldn't give me any more drugs because it could stop my heart and that I'd just have to learn to live with it. Those were the worst times, when I was sure I was losing my damn mind.

Sure, at those times I thought about it. It was contemplate ending it or lose my sanity. The shrinks like to tell you that even thinking about suicide is a sign of mental illness, but they didn’t know what I had to go through. They didn’t understand that by staring the idea in the face, by twisting it around in my head at two in the morning while my side and arm played thrash metal on my pain receptors, I was able to save myself. But yeah, I thought about it.

But I never tried… and I never will. I might be pulling back from the world, like Gerald says. But I'm pulling back simply because I'm tired of the hurt, I'm tired of the pain. Not the physical pain, but the look in people's eyes, the whispers… the mental pain.

At least in my cabin, all I have to deal with is the ghosts of a dead little boy who I failed.